exercise

Of course, smoking is bad for your health. That has been common knowledge for decades. Others argue your diet leads to more health problems than anything else. However, a new study found that a third factor is more important and most Americans are ignoring it completely: fitness. Not exercising may, in fact, be more deadly than smoking.

Study: Not Exercising is More Deadly Than Smoking

The study, which was published Friday in JAMA Network Open, took a look at 122,007 patients between 1991 and 2014. Each of the patients involved was subjected to a treadmill exercise test. After recording the results of the tests, researchers then took note of each patient’s mortality rate.

They also took a look at the patients’ habits, medical history, and how long they survived after the treadmill test (noting the median follow-up after the test was 8.4 years). What they found was a clear connection between high levels of exercise and longer, healthier lives.

While the study isn’t necessarily telling us anything new (we all know we should exercise), it points out something much more problematic. That is that a sedentary lifestyle or a lifestyle that incorporates no exercise is equal to having a major disease.

“Being unfit on a treadmill or in an exercise stress test has a worse prognosis, as far as death, than being hypertensive, being diabetic or being a current smoker,” Dr. Wael Jaber, co-author of the study, said. “We’ve never seen something as pronounced as this and as objective as this.”

According to the study, cardio fitness is associated with long-term mortality. Additionally, there has been no observed upper limit of benefit. High fitness levels were associated with the greatest survival. All in all, the more a person exercises, the lower their mortality rate is.

Are You Skipping Your Workout?

In some cases, researchers found a sedentary lifestyle to be three times as bad as smoking for health. Only about 23% of Americans get enough exercise.

Researchers called upon healthcare professionals to begin to encourage their patients to lead more active lives. It is the easiest and cheapest thing you can do to extend your lifespan and increase your overall health. And, it is undoubtedly one of the easiest things to push off.

If you get home at the end of a busy day, the last thing you want to do is go on a run. Getting up earlier simply means you are getting less sleep. So, it is easy to say you don’t have time, but just imagine how much time you’re adding to your life by doing this one simple thing.

Exercise on a Dime

Another excuse many people use to talk themselves into not exercising is the cost of going to a gym. However, that isn’t a good excuse anymore. There are plenty of ways to get your workout in on a dime.

Groupon: Groupon is a great place to get cheap exercise classes. For instance, there is a cycling class nearby that usually runs $99 per month. Groupon is running a deal that makes it so you’ll only pay $30 for the first month (and you can cancel after that).

Free places to workout: If your local park has an outdoor gym or other “workout” machines outdoors, take advantage of it. You can also find other locally-run places to workout for free (or really cheap).

Discounted memberships: As mentioned above, Groupon is a great place to get discounted memberships or exercise classes. However, you can also see about getting a discounted membership at the gym itself. Sometimes they run deals that will cut your membership in half or wave the joining fee. Keep an eye out for these deals.

Workout videos online: You don’t necessarily even need to leave your home either. Check out these workout videos online and get your cardio in in the comfort of your own home.

Check out Pinterest: Pinterest is another great place to find workouts you can do at home. Search for exercises by body part or skill level and you’ll be able to put together the perfect at-home workout.

Walk! Walking is one of the best ways to get exercise every day and most people don’t do enough of it. Instead of driving to lunch, consider going somewhere within walking distance. Or map out some time during the day where you can take a break, soak up some sunshine, and get some exercise.

There was no doubt that making time to exercise is important. Now, with the findings from this new study, you really can’t afford to be not exercising.

Readers, what do you think of these findings? Does it make you want to jump into the gym this week?

When you take a look at the overall difference in price between a healthy and unhealthy diet, it comes out to about $550 per year. For some families, this additional cost could be a real burden, but what is that cost compared to the cost of diet-related diseases, such as heart disease? When you take a look at healthy vs unhealthy eating habits makes a bigger difference than you’d think.

The Cost of Eating Healthy

Organic foods can be somewhat expensive. These foods are touted to maintain a healthy diet. These organic diets are rich in fruits, veggies, fish, and nuts. The healthiest of diets cost around $1.50 or more per day than the least healthy, according to research from the Harvard School of Public Health.

They analyzed data from 27 existing studies. Once the data was collected, they looked at the difference in price per serving, price per 200 calories (for certain foods), price per day, and price per 2,000 calories (the recommended average daily intake).

Overall, it was found that healthy diets cost significantly more than an unhealthy one. This is because some food policies have led to an inexpensive, high-quality approach, making unhealthy food cheap. However, researchers hope their findings will eventually lead to a decline in prices of healthier foods.

Cost of Poor Eating Habits

Spending $1.50 a day more pales in comparison to the cost of poor or unhealthy eating habits though. Diet-related health diseases include conditions such as heart disease, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, stroke, and some cancers. Each of these leads to more than 700,000 deaths each year. Even more, 1,000 people die each day from heart disease, stroke, and diabetes alone.

The U.S. spends around $3.3 trillion (more than $10,000 per person) on health care each year, accounting for 17.9% of the country’s overall spending. Cardiovascular disease costs the U.S. $555 billion each year.

Diabetes-related spending is estimated to be $327 billion. Strokes account for $34 billion of health care-related costs and obesity-related illnesses are responsible for another $194 billion.

Number of People Living With Diet-Related Illnesses in the U.S.

Obesity

78,100,000

High Blood Pressure

66,900,000

Diabetes

29,100,000

Heart disease

26,600,000

Cancer

20,073,000

Osteoporosis

9,900,000

Stroke

6,400,000

So, what are millions of Americans supposed to do? Obviously, eating healthy is the right thing to do for your health. But, how do you transition from unhealthy food to healthy eating habits?

Healthy vs Unhealthy Eating Habits

Before you embark on any kind of journey, whether it be changing your eating habits or your financial habits, you should know what you are looking to change. There is some debate as to what is healthy and what’s not though. Whether low-carb diets or a high protein diet is the best is not certain, but it is pretty much agreed upon that the following foods are considered healthy.

Whole grains

Lean protein, such as chicken and fish

Unprocessed red meat

Low-sodium lunch meats

Fresh fruits and vegetables

Fresh leafy greens

Cold pressed extra virgin oils

Raw nuts. seeds, and sprouts

Seaweeds and sea vegetables

Brown rice

Whole grain pasta

While some grains and higher carb foods have been added to the unhealthy food list in some circles, the food items below are generally considered to be unhealthy.

Processed foods like white bread and white pasta

Refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and aspartame

MSG and other taste-enhancing chemicals should be avoided

Processed fats and oils

Although the $550 a year price tag is a turnoff, there are a plethora of benefits when it comes to eating healthy vs unhealthy.

Higher Energy Levels

Eating healthy ensures a stable supply of energy all day long. Those who eat diets high is bad fats, processed food, and sugar are set up for a crash. It leaves you feeling sluggish by early afternoon.

Maintain Your Weight

A healthy diet boosts your metabolism. This can help you lose weight if you’ve been looking to lose. It can also help with digestion issues and help your body burn fat, wheres unhealthy foods lead to the storing of fat in the body.

Emotional Well-Being

A nutrient-rich diet will have you feeling energetic all the time. This helps your emotional wellness. When you have energy and feel happy, you get out more and interact with others, and this all supports a healthy mental state. Eating a poor diet can cause vitamin deficiencies that leave you feeling tired throughout the day.

All in all, to make a real difference in your life health-wise, you’ll need to drop your unhealthy eating habits. Even though it costs a bit more, think about everything you stand to gain from it. You can shield yourself from the cost by shopping at places like Aldi, Costco, or keeping an eye out for coupons. Eating healthy will have you feeling better and possibly save a boatload in health costs.

Readers, have you experienced transitioning between an unhealthy and healthy diet? How did you do it? Have you noticed any positive changes?

Exercise may lower risk of dementia, an aliment that has a $259 billion annual cost.

This comes from a study by Sweden’s University of Gothenburg of 1,500 women between the ages of 38 and 50 — they were given fitness and cognitive tests and then followed over the course of 44 years.

The women who were the most physically fit at the beginning of the study turned out to be almost 90% less likely to develop dementia later on in life.

Lower Risk of Dementia

Researchers found that very physically fit women had a lower risk of dementia overall. If fit women developed dementia at all, it wasn’t until 10 or more years after their peers who were less active.

To determine how active each woman was, each took a bicycle test at the age of 50; 40 of the women met the criteria to be considered a high fitness level. Around 92 of the women were measured at a medium fitness level and 59 were categorized in the low level.

Here’s what the results were over time:

Nearly one in three women with a low fitness levels at the age of 50 developed dementia later in life.

One in four women who were categorized as at medium fitness level developed dementia.

Only 5% of the physically fit women experienced cognitive decline, giving them an 88% lower risk of dementia than the moderately fit group.

More Research Needed

The study’s lead author, Dr. Helena Hörder, said this is the clearest pieces of evidence linking exercise and brain health that researchers have been able to find thus far. She also said it one of the first steps in developing a possible prevention plan for some patients.

However, the study demonstrated an association, rather than a casual relationship, between exercise and potentially lower risk of dementia. Hörder and her colleagues are calling for more research.

Readers, how does what you have read here jibe with your own experiences, if any, with exercise and brain health?

According to research, the number one New Years resolution for 2015 is to “lose weight.” Though it’s now March and the optimism of early January may seem like ages ago, if you have not started to tackle this resolution, perhaps this time you should try to enlist the help of your spouse.

Previous studies have shown that married individuals are more likely to eat healthier meals if their spouse eats healthfully as well, Now, a new study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Medicine claims the same effect can be seen in exercise.

Currently, the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans established by the US Department of Health and Human Services suggest that adults engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise (of the aerobic quality) each week or 75 minutes of vigorous-exercise.

Unfortunately, reports have found that less than half of American adults actually meet these guidelines. Common excuses include being too busy, unable to afford a gym membership or ignorant about what to do once the dumbbells and weighted vest are purchased. But the Johns Hopkins researchers suggest that by counseling married couples and encouraging them to exercise together, this intervention alone could increase exercise participation among the adult population.

As Laura Cobb, a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins and a co-author of the study said in a statement, “When it comes to physical fitness, the best peer pressure to get moving could be coming from the person who sits across from you at the breakfast table…we should harness the power of the couple to ensure people are getting a healthy amount of physical activity.”

In order to arrive at their conclusion, Cobb and her colleagues studied the medical records of over 3,000 spouse pairs who were part of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, a research program that began in 1987.

The spouse pairs recorded two medical visits with physicians approximately six years apart as reported by Medical News Today. Importantly, the authors found that on the second visit, men were 70 percent more likely to meet recommended exercise guidelines if their wives were active, compared to those whose wives were not.

This finding is significant because it also points to a cost-effective health intervention that could help millions of Americans. Lack of exercise is associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and premature death among other aliments. If seeing your spouse encourages you to exercise and vice versa, those extra minutes spent pounding the payment could save your life or at least significantly improve your health.

Here’s a question that everyone should be asking the next time they pick up a soda. Is the soda worth walking five miles or running for an hour? That’s exactly how long it would take to work off every can of soda you consume, but you probably have never thought about it in that way

Displaying caloric information in a more understandable format may lead to a sharp decline in purchase of sugary drinks, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health reports. The study was carried out by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in low-income Baltimore neighborhoods. “People don’t really understand what it means to say a typical soda has 250 calories,” claims Sara Bleich, associate professor at the university.

When people are forced to face the physical cost of calories, they respond with healthier choices. To many Americans, calories look simply as numbers, we know roughly how many we should eat, but most of us don’t pay attention to the true cost of calories. Bleich argues that in low-income areas, this phenomenon has an even greater affect on choices made in regard to nutrition. When asked about her specific interest in these areas, she noted “heavy drug use” and “all kinds of disadvantages” would have a bearing on how informed these populations are. With so many other things to worry them, “Who the heck is going to care how many calories are in the sodas that they’re drinking?,” Bleich asks.

Signs displaying calorie information in terms of physical activity — 50 minutes of running, 5 miles of walking — were placed inside corner shops in small, predominantly poor neighborhoods in Maryland. The mostly-teen customer base either skipped the drinks all together, or chose smaller drinks. According to the study customers were purchasing, on average, 203 calories’ worth of sugar-filled beverages, after the signs went up this number dropped to 173. For such a basic experiment, this change is significant.

Our bodies need calories to function, they are nothing to fear at all, just units that measure our nutrition. In other terms, a calorie is a unit of energy, a measurement of how much fuel a food item supplies to your body. It is the energy imbalance, created by over or under-eating, and over or under-exercising that cause health problems within the body. Too many calories taken in and not enough burned creates a surplus, which leads to fat growth. Excessive fat, especially around the heart, is very dangerous as it will most likely result in fatal diseases, such as heart disease.

Many Americans suffer from obesity, but the correlation between obesity and socioeconomic class is one that holds a special cause for concern. Could it be a simple lack of knowledge keeping Americans fat? If this is the case, the new signs could help to end our infamous obesity epidemic. It is estimated that nearly 20 restaurant chains could be displaying the new signs by the beginning of next year.

Get out those running shoes, but don’t despair about having to run long distances or for a long time each week. In fact, you don’t even have to come close to wearing out your running shoes to gain huge benefits from them. A new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology indicates running for even short periods of time, as little as 5 to 10 minutes a day, can have a huge positive impact of a person’s health by reducing the risk of both heart attacks and strokes. Even better, how far you get during that period of time doesn’t matter to gain the benefits.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services Physical Activity Guidelines, health benefits come with exercising moderately for 150 minutes or vigorously exercising 75 minutes each week. The new study throws these numbers completely into the wind. It doesn’t matter if you run only 30 minutes a week or how intense the running is for that period, you gain the same benefits as running for longer time periods and intensity, as compared to doing no running at all. That is, you have a 30% less chance of dying in both cases compared to someone who doesn’t run at all. The health benefit appears regardless of age, body type, health, sex or whether the person smokes or not.

The research has even better news for those wanting to avoid heart disease and stroke. While running as little as 5 minutes a day lowered the overall risk of death by 30%, it lowered the risk of both heart disease and stroke by 45%. The research also showed those who run live, on average, 3 years longer those those who don’t run at all.

The study examined over 50,137 adults over a 15 year period between the ages of 18 and 100 who participated in the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study. As part of this study, participants answered questions about their running habits. When the study started, all participants were cancer free and they’d never had an heart attack or stroke. During the 15 years, 3,413 participants died with 1,217 suffering a stroke or heart attack. The study showed the participants who ran even a few minutes a day were less likely to die from these causes.

Nearly one-quarter of the participants (24%) indicated they ran each week as a way to get exercise. Of these, those who consistently ran over a period of six years gained the greatest health benefits from running, which included a 50% decrease in chance of death from cardiovascular disease.

What if you would rather walk than run? Not all is lost, although you’ll need to do it a little longer than 5 minutes a day. Previous studies have indicated walking 15 minutes a day can also extend one’s life by about 3 years, consistent with this current study.